The Single Dude’s Guide to Survival, Volume 11

Managing Aggression: 1-5

Craning, Asking, Puffing, Pleading and Looming

Craning: This person is looking at you in an obvious wide-eyed manner from a distance. This is often used to gauge your purpose. Are you here to buy drugs, buy pussy, to cause trouble? Are you stupid and vulnerable and likely to misread this as a friendly sign that I am the most trustworthy fellow in sight?

This man may well be establishing you as a mark, a target for his accomplices.

The first thing you need to do to deal with this creep is round your shoulders, pocket your hands and grab whatever is there, even if it is just a handful of change to throw into his eyes or weight your punch. Scan first your surroundings, then his, looking for any potential accomplices. This alone sends half of these characters away. Keep checking his position without making eye contact as you scan for accomplices and go on your way.

If he comes closer then begin getting your mind right for combat. If he also keeps scanning the area he is looking for cops. In this case, I suggest you walk briskly towards him and, when within a few paces, charge, shoving him into traffic or against a wall. He will most likely not let this happen and will stop hounding you as a mark. Do not vocalize. Say nothing. Remain silent and alert.

If he keeps his distance and keeps his eyes on you than he is marking you for a more dangerous third party and you must vacate the area or prepare to deal with his accomplices. He may alternately be scouting the area and assessing the resolve of local men in advance of his crew moving their operation into this area. This is especially true if he is on a bicycle, meandering slowly and looking around into the distance. This is common behavior just after a local crew has been broken up by the police and the territory is once again open for exploitation.

Asking: Will you go into your pocket for him, look at your watch or phone for him? If you are such a person than perhaps all that was wanted was your time, or perhaps you have been selected for your distracted nature to aid in his commission of any number of crimes against you.

Ignore panhandlers.

Look through them.

Look past them.

Keep your pace even.

Never speak with them.

If you have a woman with you she will usually engage the panhandler, either as a savage bitch who is sick of beggars, trying to get you into a fight or, most often, as a sympathetic advocate of the maggot. Demand obedience from your woman on pain of immediate abandonment. Any woman that is going to put you in harm’s way so that she can feel good about being Mother Earth to its mud squiggling worms is a liability.

Yes, I know, I am losing readers here. The point is, if you are not able to be firm and unshakable in the face of the petty defiance of the pretty thing you inseminate, then you aren’t going to be able to deal with confrontational escalation with the vagrant, the criminal and the insane.

Puffing: Posing, crowding, chest bumping, pinning against vertical surface with shoulder or even forehead can range from mere support of another aggressor’s activity, to a savage confrontation in a men’s room with some hyper-aggressive human bulldozer. Once one advances to crowding, this may be charged as “assault” in some municipalities if the police are called to come and sort this out.

If you are stronger, walk through him.

If you are an excellent puncher, deck him.

If he is a monster, poke him in the eyes.

If you totally cannot handle him then grab his ears and bite off his nose.

He is assaulting you, so brush him off or drop him. Again, this seems a bit much. But, if you get yourself conditioned to go here mentally when crowded, the feral males that prey on decent men will sense something wild about you—most of the time—and back off. If they don’t, then you leave no doubt and drop them.

Pleading: Pleading often seems like the last hope of the panhandler, and often is, but is sometimes the self-debasing prequel to more serious behavior, and may be a disarming ploy on the part of the set-up element of an aggressive pair of criminals.

It is absolutely imperative that you stay alert, do not engage in conversation, and keep three paces between you and him. When he closes to one pace prepare for combat. Hit him while he takes the final step. He will usually opt not to take this step.

A good space-preservation tactic is to poke him in the throat with your fingertips while he is talking. He will then ether attack or back off, usually backing off loudly.

Using the extended talking hand against this guy is preferable. He may be too agitated to understand your resolve or read your body language. The worst foe here is the stupid one who cannot read you. I have often had an idiot approach me, miss the cues that he was about to be sliced up, punched or stabbed, and be rescued by the ensuing stupidity by one of his friends, who was smarter than he.

Looming: Looming ranges from straight up dominance posturing—usually by a taller man—to a tactical invasion of your space by a predator or a raging person hoping to illicit a trigger word or action that will justify such vaunted goals as the knocking out of your teeth.

A man who is looming over you needs to be punished. This is the perfect fool to use whatever fighting art you have developed on, for he is engaging in the stare down phase of the ritual.

If you are a counter-fighter and do not like to lead, look away, keeping him in your peripheral. He may well hit you then, opening himself up for your counter. If you look away and he does not hit you, then step back. If he steps in after you, hit him just as his foot hits the ground.

Again, as with the other aggressive behaviors, your resolve, your experience in mentally preparing yourself for this moment—and worse—and your calm behavior, will most likely deter the majority of aggressors, leaving the stupid and the lethal, the easiest and worse types, to deal with, still in your face, and progressing up the aggression trajectory.

In the following video we have a situation that could amount to pleading, puffing or looming. At 1:33 into the video the smaller man looks down and away. This is a check to ascertain if the man he is arguing with is going to hit him, as he has already determined that he is going to have to level this guy to get the resolution he needs. This requires the confidence that you can take the first shot and finish him. If you look down [down is better than away] and he does not hit you, then you can be confident that he will keep running his mouth while you set him up for the sucker punch.

This sucker punch tactic—provided you can really crack—is simply done in any of the above scenarios. Note how he kicks his rear foot out so that he can put his leg into the punch. If he is a dangerous dude setting you up, and you look down, then you will be able to see this foot switch and act.

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James LaFond

Horror and science-fiction author, James LaFond, writes on violence, urban survival, racism, masculinity, boxing, MMA, stick-fighting, fractional autonomy, history and man-whoring, from his ghetto rental in Harm City, U.S.A. His articles are available at www.jameslafond.com. You can purchase books by James on Amazon.com and you can follow him on his Facebook page.